A bit of history... (well, maybe more than a bit!)

  Jim Eagleson, WB6JNN/9 was first licensed in 1965 as both a Novice and Technician Class licensee... which was allowed under the rules at that time.  I lived just south of Watsonville, California in the small community of Las Lomas.  Watsonville is about 25 miles southeast of Santa Cruz (pic) and 30 miles northeast of Monterey about half way around the half moon shaped Monterey Bay(picture).  I was about 18 and, as I recall it, took the test while I had the mumps!

   After about 7-8 years as a Tech,  I finally got my code speed up beyond the 10 WPM "ceiling" so many people seem to experience .  The Novice License, at that time, was only a one year, non-renewable license and the Technician Class had no HF CW privelages even though it required a technical test identical to the General Class license.   Thus incentive to upgrade wasn't balanced with an appropriate mechanism to get there.

   I also found that in spite of much hoopula by higher class licensees about the necessity for knowing CW,  no one on VHF was really much interested in working with me on the code even among the quite active weak signal group in the SF Bay Area.  Some well known Southern California contest operators, in fact, were also well known for calling on CW fruitlessly for hours during VHF contests  just outside the Technician portion of the band without ever seeming to notice numerous replies only a few KHz away. True, the responses were only at 8-10 WPM.. but I considered this the ultimate "class" insult and also rather stupid, in my opinion!

   But the FCC, at least, finally saw the light and provided a path for Techs to upgrade their skills by adding Novice Band CW privelages to the license.  As a result, I upgraded directly to Advanced Class after spending a few months working on the code and I even obtained an ARRL 20 WPM certificate at one point.  Since I have rarely used CW in the past 15 years and I am not really into "DX" chasing,  I haven't bothered to get an Extra Class license.  I figure my occupation (RF Engineer) and my FCC First Class Radiotelephone license are sufficient testament to my technical capabilities.

   Education

   I studied under W6LC, Eddie Pollock, at Cabrillo Junior College.  Eddie's program, quite naturally, had a lot of emphasis on RF since he was a Navy man and very much into Ham Radio.  Since this was before the digital revolution, the rest of the program emphasized other areas of analog design. Eddie ultimately retired from teaching and became manager (if my memory serves me right) of W1AW for a while until a rare heart condition forced a retirement from that position. He now is back in California living in Capitola.

   Since I had already obtained my 2nd Class Radiotelephone license by the end of my first year of college and because of my interest in Broadcasting, I became the Chief Engineer of a local  1KW / 250W  AM station, KOMY, in Watsonville.  Thus, when at the end of the two year Electronics Technology program our class went up to take the 2nd Class Radiotelephone test,  I took the opportunity to pass the 1st Class Radiotelephone test.

   Among the interesting things we did at Cabrillo was to launch a medium sized model rocket as part of the "Ditch Day" activities at the end of the school year.  Model rockets were relatively new in 1963-65 and as a nation we were right at the beginning of manned flight into space.  As I recall, the model was about 3 feet high, used an F-100 Century or Centuri engine, and disappeared into the cloud cover some 1500 feet or so above the campus before returning on its parachute.  We even got local TV coverage (as I said, this was exciting stuff back then!)

   I also remember listening attentively on the school's Collins S-Line during early Project Mercury manned sub-orbital flights waiting for the relay ship in the Carribean to transmit re-establishment of communication with some of capsules after their ionization trail enforced radio silence during re-entry into the atmosphere.  We also listened, sadly, to news over Voice of America which confirmed the death of John F. Kennedy five or ten minutes before official confirmation was released to the American press.

   San Jose State College (now SJSU) was the next stop where I started in the Industrial Technology program (roughly equivalent to the present BSEET) but soon transfered to Radio-TV Production since my goal at the time was to go into missionary shortwave broadcasting.  I worked part time at KEAR-fm in San Francisco, flagship station of the Family Radio Network.  I was also involved in the Audio-Visual department at SJSC and later became Chief Engineer of the campus radio station, KSJS-fm for a couple of years.

   In keeping with the mission radio goal,  I also enrolled at San Jose Bible College (now San Jose Christian College).  Due to scheduling conflicts (class schedules were offset by a 1/2 hour),  I finally chose to drop out of SJSC and complete my BA at SJBC, which I did in 1970.  One of my instructors who is now president of SJCC was Bryce Jessup, W6LAB.  (Seems like I kept running into hams everywhere I went!)

   Marriage

   Along the way, I met my wife to be, Linda Chipps, and we were married in 1969 during Christmas Vacation.  She was a student at SJSC who I met through Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF).  Our early married years were typical of student marriages.. she worked days.. I worked nights.. we both attended classes the rest of the time.  (Has anyone ever figured out how we managed that when we were students.. and all on minimum wage or a little more and part time to boot?  Must've been for love because it sure wasn't for the money!)

   Work and School

   By the time I had completed my schooling at SJBC,  I had worked for Weaver's Pony Express, a direct mailing print shop where I did layout, scheduling, darkroom work, customer support and so forth.

Frank Weaver, my boss, had as his claim to 15 minutes of fame as being the GI who at the end of World War II discovered the cave in which massive amounts of Germany's Gold reserves where hidden.  The notoriety of this led him into public relations, which led him into direct mailing, which made it convenient to start a small print shop... etc.

   I also worked for a janitorial service cleaning commercial buildings such as new car show rooms, the main Pacific Bell phone company building in San Jose, the Prune Yard Tower ("tallest building between San Francisco and LA") and various apartment buildings.

   Needless to say, the Ham Radio budget during this period was next to zero!  My main activity was on Two Meters (still a Tech, remember) with a Heathkit Two'er later replaced by a TX62 Transmitter, Ameco converter, and a Lafayette KT-320 receiver which I had built from a kit as a Novice.  My recollection was that the kit cost something like $75.

  Even so, I became quite active in Amateur Satellite work after the launch of OSCAR 6 and OSCAR 7.  I even heard some real DX on some of the early passes of OSCAR 6 before everyone started using so much power that the AGC action dumped the weak signals from places like Sweden and Norway to an undetectable level. (We hams are sometimes our own worst enemies!)

   Bay Area Hams

   In spite of lack of money, I learned a lot about radio and electronics because the San Francisco Bay Area is a hotbed of activity compared to many parts of the country with regard to experimentation and active pursuits of doing something new.  Since I was a Tech, my activities were primarily aimed at VHF, UHF, and Microwaves.  Yet I never lacked for something new to learn and do.

   One close acquaintance of mine during this period was N6TX,  Paul Shuch.  Paul was very actively involved in the promotion of 220 MHz and later, 1296 and 2304 MHz experimentation.  Paul's call at that time was WA6UAM, which he used to say stood for Upgrade Amateur Microwave.  Paul wrote a number of popular articles about 1296 MHz equipment and techniques for Ham Radio and other magazines at the time.

   In one experiment we did, I remember hanging one of Paul's small, 4-element 23cm beam antennas from the mirror in my VW Bus and driving around working him and Bill, K6UQH on 23cm SSB using a low power solid-state transverter with my Ten Tec Argonaut.  Talk about mobile flutter!

   Paul presently is chasing the ultimate DX as director of the Seti League.   He used to refer to some signals during his moonbounce efforts as "3 dB below the threshold of ESP".  Some might suggest that the signal(s) he's trying to find these days are "many, many dB below the threshold of wishful thinking" if I read the comments on various science and amateur radio related newsgroups correctly.   It certainly is very much like trying to find a needle in a very large haystack, but Paul always did like the big challenges! Those with the inclination to join the discussion should look up SETI on the newsgroups feature of Alta Vista.

The picture, by the way, is of his SETI "portable rig".

  The First OSCARs

   Of course hams in the SF Bay Area have traditionally done a lot of things at least as odd as hanging antennas from bus mirrors or trying to bounce signals off the moon with amateur equipment.  In the early part of the space program a group of hams working mostly at Lockheed had the crazy notion of building a small satellite to launch in place of the lead ballast usually used to balance the spin stabilized rockets used in those days.  The lead ballast was essentially wasted space and weight even though using it was essential to the success of a mission.

   Some of the hams involved included Lance Ginner K6GSJ , Gene Root WB6OOO, Nick Marshall, W6OLO (later known for his Project OZMA work which preceeded SETI), and Don Stoner, W6TNS.  Harley Gabrielson and Bill Eitel were also involved.  Chuck Smallhouse, WA6MGZ (now W7CS) and Chuck Towns, K6LFH were also involved.

   Lance, K6GSJ, had the unusual distinction of having had some part in the launching of all Amateur Satellites (except the Russian ones) up through at least OSCAR 13. He is also very involved with Baycom activities in the SF Bay Area including the REINAS project.  Click here to see an unusual picture of Lance against a panoramic view of Bay Area taken from Mt. Umunuhm.

    Several of the early OSCAR crew are seen in this picture of OSCAR II.  I've had the pleasure of meeting many of them over the years both in association with Project OSCAR and through the W6GD UHF Society which used to meet at SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator) once a month.  Some, of course, were also quite active on 2M SSB as well as 220, 432 or 1296 MHz.

   There are many stories about those first few "birds" not the least of which is that OSCAR I  was the first non-government satellite of any kind ever launched, beating out Telstar by about one month!

   Many people also seem to be aware that the cost of OSCAR I was only about $67.   What most people don't know is that most of that $67 was spent on postage.   Most of the actual hardware was either from the scrapbox or donated materials from various aerospace companies in the Bay Area.

   Three spaceframes were built, two of which were launched as OSCAR I and II as shown in the picture above. The third is in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.

   That third spaceframe had a bit of a problem when plating was attempted because in selecting new material from the scrap pile in order to finish it, the new material inadvertently ended up having a trace element in it which made electroplating a bit difficult to say the least!

   For more information on Amateur Satellites, check out AMSAT's Web Site.  They have links to some pretty good history of the 30 odd satellites launched by the worldwide Amateur Radio community since OSCAR I.  Check out some of the other links at their site, too.